The bitterness of Indigeneity is validating: Hyunjoo Yu, ‘Zitkala-Ša’s indisputably moody, vital evolution(s)’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

The bitterness of Indigeneity is validating: Hyunjoo Yu, ‘Zitkala-Ša’s indisputably moody, vital evolution(s)’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 2023

03Jan24

Excerpt: Gertrude Bonnin (Yankton Dakota), also known by her penname Zitkala-Ša, grabbed non-Native readers’ attention with her semi-autobiographical trilogy published in The Atlantic Monthly in January, February, and March 1900. As a graduate of White’s Manual Labor School, and as a teacher at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Zitkala-Ša wrote what was not expected of her. Perhaps, or even likely, the expectation for her was to act as a grateful poster figure who praises the benefits of the late-nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools and their notorious mission to “civilize” Indigenous children. Her stories bear witness to an Ihanktonwan child’s experiences of violence, sickness, and isolation, and her rebellious feelings that express explicit distress, disgust, and anger toward the settler colonial disciplines. Richard Henry Pratt, the founder and superintendent of the Carlisle School, openly rebuked the stories. He wrote in the school newspaper, Red Man, that he fears that “the home-sick pathos – nay, more, the underlying bitterness of her story will cause readers unfamiliar with Indian schools to form entirely the wrong conclusions” (quoted in Katanski 2005, 123). And to this, Zitkala-Ša retorted in her correspondence to the editor, which appeared in the April 1900 issue of Red Man, “I give outright the varying moods of my own evolution; … no one can dispute my own impressions and bitterness!” (1900b?).

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